Far Cry 2

The Good
The sequel to 2004’s PC smash hit Far Cry. Far Cry 2, is a different beast. It has little to nothing to do with the original game. And it is a freeform game, or sandbox game if you prefer. But will such a system work for a FPS?

Heart Of Darkness

In Far Cry 2, you play as a mercenary. Whom you get to choose. I picked this badass looking Indian dude. You are sent to a war torn and unnamed area of Africa. And not unlike the protagonist in Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, you mission is to kill an arms dealer, no, not Col. Kurtz, your target is known only as The Jackal.

You take jobs from either the APR of the UFLL. Two faction vying for control of the region. You can also take work from both. Along the way you meet many people all who seek to use you. But that’s cool as you only goal is to kill the Jackal. Not everyone is Far Cry 2, is out to use you. You will meet others, mercs like yourself. They will be your buddies. And serve a multitude of functions. They can come to your aid when you are in trouble. They can also help you on a job. If they get into trouble, you can help them. Or if they have wounds to severe, you can put them out of their misery. Or you can be a dick and abandon them.

There are also, special “buddy-missions”. In these scenarios, you go and do a job for a buddy. Which increases your reputation, in the game world. And it increases your buddies view of you.

There is a lot to do in Far Cry 2. Aside from the main missions. You can work for the weapons dealer. And destroy convoys. Thus unlocking new weapons to purchase. And there are lots of real, weapons. Which you even must keep in good shape, or they will jam, and possibly explode. You can also take assassination jobs. Upon finding satellite towers, you receive a phone call, from a creepy sounding guy, giving you the coordinates of your target. The job pays diamonds upon completion of the job.(The currency of choice in Far Cry 2.-MM-) These are the most fun side-jobs in the game. In one such scenario, I had to sneak into town and kill my target. Of course towns and villages are cease-fire zones. So, I snuck up into a bell-tower. And pulled out my Dragnov. And making like Chow Yun Fat, I killed the target. And then had to escape. As the entire militia was after me. Not all of the hit man jobs are this dramatic. In some cases you just have to kill your target in a secluded area, or blow up his vehicle.

Not all the danger in Far Cry 2, comes from enemies. As earlier upon your arrival, you contract malaria. You are given pills to keep your symptoms in check. When you are running low, you can take jobs for the underground. In these you must deliver, travel papers, in exchange for medicine. Thus you get to continue living, and you also get to save some poor refugees. It’s a win-win situation.

“I bless the rains down in Africa, Gonna take the time to do the things we never had…”-Toto, Africa

Aside from all the missions, you can spend and probably will, spend a lot of time just exploring. While exploring, you can find diamonds, your GPS, will lead you to them, as it blinks more fiercely the closer you get. You can also find recordings of the Jackal. Which can be given to a reporter. You can also unlock safe-houses. Here you can rest, save, and replenish your supplies. The area you explore is huge, so going on foot would take too long. Luckily, there are many vehicles, to be used. Cars, SUV’s Jeeps with gun turrets, go-karts, and many boats as well. Unfortunately there are no flying vehicles. You can also scout out all guard posts. This will let you know what kind of things can be found there. There are many different regions to see. From deserts, to swaps and jungles. This game actually reminds me of Oblivion. Even more than Fallout 3 did. It is also very long. Consider that most first person shooters only take 10-20 hours to complete. Far Cry 2, took me some 47 hours. Of course, I did just about all the missions, and explored most if not all of Africa.

The graphics are very good. All the people, places, and things look great in Far Cry 2. As one would expect. The lighting effects are amazing. And the attention to detail is outstanding. Say, for example, that you have a flamethrower. As you burn down your foes, you are bound to catch the trees and grass on fire. When you do it burns, and chars. The combat is visceral. Partially when dressing wounds. When you have a serious wound, you can bleed to death if not treated. When, you heal, your avatar will either bandage his wounds, or pull out the bullet with pliers. Or in some cases rip it out with his teeth.

There is also wild life to be seen in Far Cry 2. No lions, or anything like that. But you will see gazelles, water buffalo, and zebra. The game is just gorgeous. From the days, to the moon-lit nights. Either on standard of high definition, both look great.

The music and sound are good also. From, the African music, to the sounds of fire-arms, and wild-life. And how could I forget the great voice acting? All the characters sound great. And have accents from were ever they are from. For example, my Chinese, buddy had a think mandarin accent. The chatter of enemies if interesting as well. While I was attacking I heard them say, “How many are there?” “I think it’s just one man..” Great stuff.

The Bad
Far Cry 2, is far from a perfect game.(You could say it’s a Far Cry!-MM-) First off all. You fight way too much. This may seem, strange, considering that this is a FPS. But I felt that it was excessive. When you are going to a mission all these jack offs keep attacking you on the road. Even if your reputation is high. Now tell me, why would they attack you if they were afraid of you?

What is worse, is that say, you just clear out a guard-post. Then you come back, a short time later. And already it is fully staffed. WTF? There would not be that many people. Every time you got to a mission it is crawling with enemies. Why would all these places have so many guards?

The A.I. is also often cheap. One dumbass, will have mortar, or and RPG. To take out one man…right.

What is the point of these so called, sandbox games, that have a reputation system, if it rarely effects the game. It would have been so easy to implement. Just get attacked less, as you reputation grows. How hard is that?

The game has some minor bugs and glitches. That can get very annoying. If with the updates.

This game can be very tedious. As it follows the same basic patterns per mission. Say that you let your buddy help you out. At the end of the mission, you always have to bail them out of trouble. Every single time. Which makes the game to repetitive.

The Bottom Line
Overall, Far Cry 2, is a step in the right direction. For the genre. But there is lots of room for improvement. Of course I don’t think that this style of style of FPS will replace the tried and true type. Hell, they still make games like Painkiller and Serious Sam, to this day, and that is the very first type of FPS. If you are an FPS junkie like myself, you should at least give Far Cry 2 a go.

The Good
I like that there's actually an ending in the game so it doesn't repeat itself more than it already does. Other than that, I don't like anything else.

The Bad
Those who cried about how Quake looked so brown, you will cry even more about this. There's is up to four shades of brown in this game. And some blue which comes from the sky.

All the missions are the same, go there, kill that, return. It's a long way to your mission. The enemies spawn way too fast. The weapons of the enemies never break when they use it but when you get it from them they do almost directly. Searching for diamonds is useless since the diamonds you find aren't worth a damn. The malaria feature is useless and always shows its symptoms when you're in a firefight.

The faction choosing is weird since you do one mission for one side and when you're done you can't go back so you must choose the other faction.

The Bottom Line
A loss for us veteran Far Cry fans, a punch in the groin and the face at the same time is too kind do describe how bad this game is.

The Good
This open world game really has a believable environment with its enriched graphic detail, be it jungle, savannah or dessert. Interesting details like roaming wild animals make the locations you're in very lively. Efforts were also made to make the buildings you enter look like habitable or serviceable places. Music and realistic sound effects add to the atmosphere. If VR could be implemented, this game would go to the next level.

The plot in this game is very elaborate. Even for a villain, the Jackal is a very likable character for his experience, his wisdom, his resourcefulness and the choices he makes. The more you listen to the tapes, the more you want to meet him. Even the buddies' missions have interesting motives for carrying them out.

Weapons in the game are well-balanced. The machete works properly and deals effectively killing blows, something it didn't do in the game before. It's fun to earn better weapons and upgrades, giving the game a sort of pseudo-RPG mechanic. The jamming mechanic is an interesting, but sometimes inconvenient way to add a survival element to the game.

The Bad
The game breaks away many of the most important elements from the first game. There's no radar to indicate where enemies are currently positioned, so expect to be ambushed all the time. Your buddies are one time savers, but they don't really do anything to help you like Valerie Constantine did in the prequel. You can no longer push vehicles effectively and certainly not push boats, forcing you to get a new one every moment or so with a lot of walking, running and catching your breath all the while. Also there's no body armour to protect you, just your own body as a meat shield. And don't even think about hiding underwater, because the system eats your health bars very quickly.

Stealth is rare in this game and not easy to utilise. You'll need the camo suit and all the silent weapons you can stock up as soon as possible. You cannot throw stones to distract your enemy, forcing you to improvise. The game really could have done with gas grenades to stealthily take out a group of enemies. The monocular is useless, only good for tagging guard posts, but it obscures your vision so you can hardly spot enemies. Far Cry 1's binoculars was so much better. It can also be difficult to traverse with scree and trees almost everywhere. Sometimes there are cliffs and mountains that have invisible barriers that stop you. Why make it look like you can ascend when you can't? And there's also trees that have thicker boundaries than shown so you end up messing up a sniper shootout before you know it.

The enemy AI completely breaks the scale, you'll have a hard time trying to match it. Perfect marksmanship for headshots is a must, otherwise enemies are going to take entire clips to kill. Even when you're careful, enemies seem to know where you are and nail you down in your hiding place. And switching a weapon is sluggish, even more so when reloading or cocking the current one, it's like an unfair rail shooter. Half the time you'll get killed before you can press the heal button, you'll be wishing you could auto-heal. One of your greatest enemies will be falling damage, especially from falling off edges that don't let you jump on walkable terrain. And there's the malaria, which requires the tedious process of taking pills.

The Bottom Line
Everything will punish and frustrate you, even if you're a brilliant FPS player. This is not a game you can go full rampage without dying repeatedly. Avoid playing the highest difficulty, this is for masochists. It's a great shame that the player character does not do sensible things like don a disguise or turn vehicles into VBIEDs, but instead choose to take the full plunge in the face of danger. There's so much missing from what you expect from any good fashioned FPS from a radar indicator to auto-saving.

I really wanted to give this game a merit, even a distinction, but its sadistic difficulty level and,abundance of flaws drive it away from being the perfect time spender. This title is in dire need of remaking and improvement and nice array of achievements to give the feel of accomplishment. If you decide to play this, take it easy and do your best to master its mechanics if you want to get far, otherwise just cry.